Goebbels: A Biography (52 page)

After the Austrian Anschluss, the Nazi leadership cast their eyes on the Sudetenland as the next target of German annexation policy. As late as November 1937 Hitler had thought a move on Czechoslovakia impossible unless France was out of action, but now, buoyed by his Austrian triumph, he no longer considered this a precondition for aggression toward Czechoslovakia.

On March 19, in Hitler’s study in the Reich Chancellery, Goebbels was informed about Hitler’s further foreign policy plans: “Then we study the map: Czechoslovakia is next. We share it with Poland and Hungary. [Go in] relentlessly at the next opportunity.” It emerges at
this point that “we wanted to bag” the Memel area, administered by Lithuania, “if Kovno had gotten into a conflict with Warsaw,” but the case had not arisen: “We are now a boa constrictor, digesting its prey.” But it did not stop there: “Then the Baltic, and a chunk of Alsace and Lorraine. We need France to sink further and further into its crisis. No false sentimentality.”
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Goebbels was not greatly impressed when, in the second half of March, the Czechs showed themselves increasingly prepared to concede more autonomy to the Sudeten Germans: “That won’t help them much anymore. They’ve had it.”
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Thus the leader of the Sudeten German Party was instructed by Hitler on March 28 to become more aggressive toward the Czech government,
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and Goebbels too was told “always to ask for more than can be given.”
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Correspondingly, on April 24 in Karlsbad, Henlein announced an eight-point program still ostensibly based on notions of autonomy but in fact framed in such a way that its demands could only be met by incorporating the Sudetenland into the Reich.
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During May, as instructed, the German press exercised restraint (relatively speaking) with respect to the controversial question of minorities. Incidents in the Sudeten territories should certainly be reported, but not in “sensational style.”
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This restraint was motivated mainly by a state visit to Italy that Hitler undertook, accompanied by Goebbels, from May 3 to 10.
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In his narcissistic quest for recognition, Goebbels was once more blinded by the lavishness of the social program, while merely noting the political results of the trip as a kind of side issue: “Mussolini completely agrees about Austria. […] Mussolini gives us an absolutely free hand over the Czech question.”
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While Goebbels was still in Italy, Magda gave birth to her fourth child, a daughter, to be called Hedwig. Goebbels heard the news from Hitler—they were on a warship in the Gulf of Naples at the time—who had received a telegram to that effect.
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After his return from Italy, on May 19 Goebbels set in motion a huge campaign against the Prague government. His pretext was an interview with Foreign Minister Kamil Krofta.
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The newspapers were ordered to appoint “special correspondents for Sudeten German questions” and not just go on producing “small beer.”
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By contrast, the Foreign Office continued to advise restraint on the Sudeten question.
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Ribbentrop himself complained to Goebbels about the “fierce campaign against Prague,” but knowing he had his
leader’s support in the matter, Goebbels was like a brick wall.
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Hence on May 21 the German press made a great clamor about new incidents in Prague and Brno; this started a “hellish concert.”
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The Foreign Office now fell into line with Goebbels and did its best to inflame the anti-Czech polemic in the German press.
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This began a press campaign against Prague which—with Goebbels raising or lowering the temperature according to political expediency—was to last four months.

In May, false reports of alleged German troop movements and further incidents along the German-Czech border led to a “weekend crisis” full of hectic activity in Prague, Berlin, London, and Paris.
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Goebbels felt that the “pussyfooting” Ribbentrop was still putting the brakes on his campaign. He soon saw the German press engaged in “rearguard actions” so that the campaign had to be officially reined in by May 28.
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And on May 29 Hitler expressed his concern that they were “not yet there in terms of rearmament.” Hitler added that this in no way ruled out “more hell-raising” against Prague.
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In this vein, the next day Hitler signed the “Führer directive concerning Operation Green,” in which he asserted, “It is my irrevocable intention to smash Czechoslovakia by military action in the near future.”
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In the weeks that followed, Goebbels constantly took the initiative in blasting noisy propaganda at the Czechs to intimidate the Prague government.
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But he was also frequently forced to tone down his campaign,
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and not only for reasons of foreign policy: Domestically, too, it was not easy to sustain a mood of crisis in the long term without offering the home population some possibility of a solution.

In mid-July he came to the following conclusion: “The public are getting a bit tired of our campaign against Prague. You can’t keep a crisis on the boil for months on end.” But Goebbels was also deterred by the medium- and long-term effect his aggressive propaganda was having at home, for there was a growing “war panic” in Germany that might become unmanageable: “People think war has become inevitable. Nobody likes it. This fatalism is the worst thing of all. This is how it was in July 1914. So we’ll have to be more careful. Otherwise we’ll slide into a catastrophe that nobody wants but that happens all the same.”
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Two days later he reports that he has had a “serious discussion with Hanke about the possibility of war.” The press had made “mistakes,” he writes, using “the sharp weapon of attack too often, so that it becomes chipped in the process.”
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Despite these doubts and reservations on the part of the propaganda minister, the press campaign was continued into July, if only at a low level of intensity.
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But Goebbels’s entries for this month show how far he still was from taking the ultimate step and putting propaganda directly to work preparing for war. Given that the regime had avowed its peaceful intentions for years, such a complete U-turn would not have been unproblematic—and Goebbels himself was not yet ready for it.

Goebbels’s other main preoccupation in the months after the Anschluss was a new, more intensive phase in the persecution of the Jews.

The widespread acts of anti-Semitic aggression committed by Austrian Nazis during and after the Anschluss
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also aggravated Jewish persecution in the “Old Reich,” a tendency that had been encouraged by the Party leadership since autumn 1937, in parallel with the change of direction toward an expansionary foreign policy.
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Now, in March 1938, not only did Party activists in many places commit offenses against Jews but within the regime, too, efforts were stepped up to complete a process begun in 1933, expelling the Jews from economic and social life. In this, as in the waves of Jewish persecution of 1933 and 1935, Joseph Goebbels played a leading role. His ambition was to set an example in Berlin and thereby figure within the regime as the representative of a tough line on future “Jewish policy.” As he wrote, “You’ve got to make a start somewhere.”
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In April 1938 he began systematically to harass the Berlin Jews, aiming to isolate them from the rest of the population and drive them out of the city. This action was coordinated with Police Commissioner Helldorf, who ordered a comprehensive list of anti-Semitic measures for the capital to be drawn up.
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However, Goebbels then obtained Hitler’s agreement to postpone these measures until after his Italian journey.
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In fact, Party activists started in May to deface or smash in the shop fronts of Jewish businesses and to damage synagogues. Once again the propaganda minister interpreted these attacks as signs of “popular anger,” taking them as legitimating his move—in conjunction
with Helldorf—to carry out his plans for a “Jew-free” Berlin utopia. Again he took care to secure Hitler’s agreement to his “Jewish program for Berlin” and then spurred Helldorf into action.
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In a big raid on the Kurfürstendamm—since 1931 at the latest, this stretch of road, so beloved of strollers in central Berlin, had been Helldorf’s happy hunting ground for anti-Semitic operations—the police arrested three hundred people in a café, mostly Jews. The following day, when, to Goebbels’s chagrin, Helldorf released the majority of them,
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the propaganda minister put Helldorf under great pressure, addressing three hundred Berlin policemen: “What I’m doing is trying to incite you. Against any kind of sentimentality. The watchword is not the law but harassment. The Jews have got to get out of Berlin.”
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Within the framework of a movement to apprehend “asocials” throughout the Reich, he did in fact bring about the arrest of increasing numbers of Jews—over a thousand in Berlin alone—mostly for minor transgressions. The message conveyed by propaganda concerning these arrests was clear: Jews were by nature criminals and asocials, and the power of the state must be used to exclude them. But in view of the great international tension around the Sudetenland crisis, Hitler could not afford any more negative headlines in the foreign press, which was following events in Berlin very closely. Hence his personal order on June 22 to halt the action.
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Thanks to reports in the foreign press and Hitler’s decision to backpedal, Goebbels appeared in a fairly dubious light as the originator of the Berlin action, as he had in 1935 following the “Kurfürstendamm riots.” He was already trying, to some degree, around June 20, 1938, to rein in the activities of the Berlin Party organization.
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He now tried to put the blame for the desecration of the Jewish shop fronts squarely on Helldorf, whose actions were, so Goebbels said, completely contrary to his own “orders.”
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Eventually Goebbels identified “a Police Director and a District Leader” as the real perpetrators of the “Jewish action.”
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At the Solstice Ceremony of the Berlin Gau, he made another inflammatory anti-Semitic speech but announced at the same time that the appropriate measures would be pursued within the law.

The Berlin “action” was followed in June, July, and August 1938 by further demonstrations and excesses carried out in other cities by Party adherents against Jews. In the case of Stuttgart at least, Goebbels’s
hand can be seen in these events. At the same time, the Party press stepped up its anti-Semitic propaganda once again.
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Various entries in Goebbels’s diaries show that over the summer the propaganda minister continued to be very busy with police and administrative measures designed to chase the Jews out of the city; he secured Hitler’s backing for this.
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It was not until September, when the Sudeten crisis was mounting to a new peak, that the regime eased off somewhat on its anti-Semitic campaign.
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During the Bayreuth Festival in July Goebbels had a lengthy discussion with Hitler about the Sudeten question, which the latter wished to see “resolved by force.” “The Führer wants to avoid war,” noted Goebbels. “That’s why he’s preparing for it by all possible means.”
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Starting in late July, German press policy toward Czechoslovakia was very much influenced by the Runciman mission, an unofficial British delegation under Lord Runciman due to begin an attempt at mediation in Czechoslovakia in early August.
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In the following weeks, the German press veered between a degree of restraint on the one hand (not wanting to give the impression that the Sudeten German Party was merely a puppet of Berlin),
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and on the other hand a combination of fiery polemics and demonstrations of German strength and determination, aimed at influencing the negotiations.
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Between August 22 and 26, Goebbels was completely taken up with the visit to Germany of the Hungarian “Regent” Miklós Horthy, whom he accompanied on trips to Kiel and Heligoland and during his subsequent stay in Berlin.
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During this time there was a temporary lull in sharp attacks on Czechoslovakia, but then the press polemics started up again with full force. As instructed, the German press questioned the raison d’être of the “Czech state,” while the Sudeten German Party was negotiating with Lord Runciman and Edvard Beneš.
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Meanwhile, Karl Hermann Frank, one of the Sudetenland’s leading figures, was directed by Hitler to provoke the Czech government.
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When the Prague government largely met the demands of the Sudeten German Party, coming up with its “Fourth Plan,” the SdP in Mährisch-Ostrau provoked an incident—a violent confrontation
with the police—to provide a pretext for breaking off the negotiations. For Goebbels, this came “at exactly the right time.”
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The German press was instructed to say as little as possible in concrete terms about the Czech government’s proposals but make a splash with the events in Mährisch-Ostrau.
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The Nuremberg Party rally, taking place from September 6 to 13, gave the Nazi leadership another excellent opportunity to make further monumental threats against Czechoslovakia and the western powers. Hitler asserted in his closing speech that “Herr Benesch” was not in a position “to make any gifts to the Sudeten Germans”; they had the same rights as other peoples, and if the western powers “felt they must go all out to sponsor the repression of Germans,” then this would have “grave consequences.” In his diary, Goebbels gives a knowing interpretation of this passage, revealing the plain text behind this slyly phrased but in fact brazen message: “Herr Benesch must ensure justice. How he does so is his business. We’re not telling him what justice is. But if he doesn’t ensure it, which is something we will be the judges of, then we intervene.” In short: “a diplomatic masterstroke.”
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Immediately after the rally, events seemed to be about to peak. “The Sudeten Germans are driving the revolution onward,” noted Goebbels. “Massive demonstrations everywhere, marching, sometimes states of emergency. Things are developing just as we wanted them to.”
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After his return from Nuremberg on September 13, Frank further exacerbated the situation by issuing an ultimatum to the Prague government: They must suspend the martial law they had imposed on Western Bohemia because of the Sudeten German unrest.
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This obviously created a pretext that could have been used to justify intervention by the Reich.
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Goebbels threw himself into the campaign on September 14 with an aggressive editorial (appearing under the pseudonym “sagax”) in the
Völkischer Beobachter
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He was enthusiastic about the latest “alarming news from Sudeten Germany” and was obviously completely indifferent to whether the reports of atrocities had any foundation in reality: “They have found over 50 dead in just one village. This will trigger the most terrific revolutionary outbreak imaginable.”

But Hitler hesitated to react to Frank’s maneuvering, and the unrest (which Goebbels was ready to see as the beginning of an uprising) collapsed for lack of support from the Reich and in the face of
solid resistance from the Czechs.
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Then, on the evening of September 14, came the great sensation: “Chamberlain asks the Führer for a meeting.” Hitler immediately invited the British prime minister to visit the Obersalzberg the next day. Goebbels’s commentary on the turn of events reveals the concerns of the German leadership: “These sly Englishmen are covering themselves in advance. Creating a moral excuse for themselves. And gradually devolving the war guilt on to us if it should come to a conflict.”
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Goebbels was not involved in the September 15 discussions in Hitler’s Berchtesgaden refuge. From Berlin, however, he ensured that they took place against a backdrop of threats, with press and radio reports of panic supposedly sweeping through Czechoslovakia and military measures taken by Prague to which the German side would not fail to respond.
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By contrast, only the most uninformative communiqué was issued about the talks with Chamberlain. In fact, the British prime minister, agreeing in principle to the secession of the Sudeten German areas, suggested a plebiscite on the question.
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On September 17 Hitler finally called Goebbels to the Obersalzberg.
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The solution the British prime minister had put into play “does not quite suit us,” said Hitler. But “at the moment, there’s not much we can do about it.” Goebbels appeared convinced that Czechoslovakia would be “dissolved amicably”: “London is extremely scared of a world war. The Führer has declared emphatically that he will not shrink from it if need be. But Prague remains intransigent for the time being.”
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They continued their discussion the next day. Meanwhile, Paris and London were proposing a plebiscite on the question of sovereignty in the Sudeten German areas. Would Prague bow to the pressure? “The Führer thinks not, but I say they will.”
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The next day, still more positive news reached the Obersalzberg. At a Franco-British summit, the decision had been made to call on Czechoslovakia to cede the Sudeten territories. Furthermore, Chamberlain had asked Hitler for another meeting.
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Triumph seemed within reach: “Complete change of direction in the London and Paris press. They’re all furious with Prague. […] The Führer is already redrawing the map. He’s going to raise quite categorical demands with Chamberlain. […] They will accept.”
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Accordingly, the regime no longer assigned much importance to Prague’s newfound willingness to make concessions, especially since a new situation had arisen with the territorial demands now being
made by Poland and Hungary upon the Czech Republic.
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There was one task left for the press, as Goebbels noted: “Our people have created enough incidents along the border. The press is taking them up. We’re working on aggravating them.”
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Goebbels had now been involved in running his intensive press campaign against the Czechs for months. It was the first instance of the whole German press being coopted for a long period in the service of a calculated diplomatic blackmail maneuver. But the campaign worked only in close conjunction with military threats, diplomatic moves, and the unrest generated by the Sudeten German Party. Moreover, as we have seen, Goebbels was more than once obliged to alter course drastically in response to a quickly changing situation. Above all it became clear, as Goebbels had perceived back in July, that the effect on domestic politics of his propaganda campaign—designed to accustom the population to the idea of war—was difficult to calculate; pro-peace propaganda had been too dominant in recent years.
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